Thursday, June 19, 2014

Day 14: P-day


We’re realizing more and more that we need a break from our adventures every few days to do a little prep for the next couple of days.  For example, we haven’t been eating dinner because we’re rolling in so late that we’re too tired to cook so we’re just eating ramen. (2 minute noodles here)  So today we took the day off to plan some menus and do some beginning prep.  Tomorrow morning, before we head out for the day, we’ll prep dinner so when we get back all we have to do is pop it in the microwave for a few minutes and presto!  A healthy meal after a long day of exploring!

Today happens to be my cousin Reece's birthday and tomorrow is his Dad's.  Not only that, but he and his family joined us tonight in Tassy so they can spend more time with us.  How cool is that?!  To show our appreciation—and because what’s a birthday without yummy food and cake—we went all out.  We knew he liked Mexican food so we made him beans and green rice and steak quesadillas with oysters killpatrick as an appetizer.  Turns out he’s never had oysters before but he ate the first one just to be polite.  Luckily it was smothered in bacon so it wasn’t too bad—he actually ate a couple of them.  

We'd had an adventure searching for dry beans.  We couldn’t find ANY.  We went to 4 different stores and all we could find was a 9 bean soup mix.  Finally, in desperation, we stopped at the five and dime down the street and they had half kilo bags of black beans!  You would never believe what I paid for two pounds of black beans!  But I was pretty excited as I trotted home with that prize!  When Cathy walked in and saw them she exclaimed, "Where in the world did you find black beans?!"  Weird to be in a country where you can't just go to any old supermarket and buy beans.

Cody got them cooking and I laid down for a little nap only to wake up and find that he expected me to wake up and turn them down.  The whole cabin was filled with smoke and the smell was awful!  My precious black beans were ruined!  Not to be defeated, we did our best to take the beans off the top and leave the burnt ones stuck to the bottom of the pan.  We saved about 2/3 of them and, after Cody was done seasoning them, you’d never know they were almost fish food!

At that point, we offered to take the kids to the zoo to feed kangaroos and guess what?  They all turned us down in favor of…wait for it…playing in the club house.  Seriously.  They would rather play with some nursery toys in an old barn than go to a wild life preserve in Tasmania to feed kangaroos!  Not one to argue about saving $150 we stayed in.  One of these times though, they’re going to want to go do the cool stuff I’ve planned!


I love that I was so excited to hear Cathy’s car pull up and even more that we got to spend Reece and BJ’s birthdays with them.  That’s two of their last 3 birthdays that we got to spend with them! How cool is that?!  We had a great time sitting around eating and visiting.  Good times!  Even ∞ tried an oyster.  She hated it, but she tried it!



Seriously, my favorite parts of this trip so far have been the ones where we're just sitting in the kitchen swapping stories with my family.  They’re memories I will treasure forever.

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